For high-denominator fractions, would decreasing the font aspect ratio to "widen" the glyphs help? I tend to find in-general that I have to tweak the font-aspect settings different for dimensions vs. text for the same font and font-height. For plot-plans and site-work, I often have to use different fonts for dimension-text and notation-text since my default office-std drafting text doesn't have the special character glyphs I need for angles and metes-and-bounds.

An optional or hard-coded en-space [or even an em-space for clarity] between inches and the numerator would be useful for better readability.

Currently I generally don't use the stacked fractions for this very reason; they appear to run-together when printed.

We never had a problem with stacked fractions using our old Datacad font ARCWY2GP. This is probably due to the difference in how Datacad handles the SHX fonts "kerning" or whatever is the equiv. for SHX fonts compared to TTF, plus toss in how Datacad creates the Stacked Fractions using individual characters. It's not hard to see how things might get wonky real fast. This is the last issue I think with our move to using all TTF's. It seems it's really just an issue with numerators that have more than 1 character. most combinations of 2 digit numerators fit, only a few bleed over. So I think I am going to try to keep using Stacked Fractions for now unless it becomes more of a bother. It just saves so much space with stacked fractions I'd hate to loose that. Tried adjusting the dimensions text aspect but it just made each character wider, did not affect the spacing. Thanks for the ideas Ted!

joshhuggins wrote:Is there a way to add some space between the main dim. and it's stacked fractions? If not could we maybe get an option to add some padding space in the Text Style menu for dimensions?

Architectural-type dimensions are tricky...especially with stacked fractions...from a graphics standpoint. Some word-processing programs use super-script and subscript -- if they can handle stacked fractions at-all -- and others use superscript and small-caps with varying degrees of success. Graphics programs are even more glitchy... One of the 'burp's in Sketch-Up is when using SU or Layout's internal dimensioning-tool you can occasionally get a dimension where the "zero-inches" is omitted and instead of [ 17'-0 1/2" ] you get [ 17'-1/2" ]...which can be confused for [17'-1 1/2" ] by a less knowledgeable reader.

I've been looking for a used sailboat and talking and chatting with yards and sailmakers on what's available and "how much". For some truly-perverse reason, some boat-builders, sailmakers and riggers use feet-and-decimal inches. [ 6'-3 5/8" ] => [ 6'-3.675" ] I don't know if this is a hold-over from the Age of Steam and Rivets, or maybe an older British or maybe New England engineering practice that survived in the boat-building industry. Datacad supports feet-and-decimal inches, so it's obviously still used in some industries....but I've not run into it being used before.

One of the first monumental tasks for Packard to built the British Merlin aircraft-engines was to completely redraft the Rolls-Royce blueprints into US-typical 3rd-Angle Projection so the production engineers could understand what they were looking at. I don't know if they converted the Whitworth and BNC/BNF fasteners and threads from to American SAE for US-built Packard-Merlin production. Before Metrication, the British auto industry was using machine-tools, fasteners and threads from SIX different systems intermixed on the same car; Whitworth, British National Fine, British Standard Cycle, British Association Screw Thread (a quasi-Metric thread), Metric and SAE. ...Any wonder why British Leland went under?? We only struggle with SAE or Metric.

Except for Land Surveyors who contend with "survey feet" of several slightly different length.....Bwahhahhahahhaha!

Josh, just out of curiosity, why would you use 1/128 of an inch in dimensions? I am sure you have a reason I just don't know what it is. I feel lucky if contractors get within an inch most of the time.

Paul Nida wrote:Josh, just out of curiosity, why would you use 1/128 of an inch in dimensions? I am sure you have a reason I just don't know what it is. I feel lucky if contractors get within an inch most of the time.

[update] I recently watched a WW2-era industrial film on YouTube and they were comfortable back then with 1/64th-inch on a steel rule being 16-thousandths ...even in the tool room. I've had my eye out on Ebay for some mechanical engineer's rules. Not 1/2"=12" but 1/2"=1" (true half-size), 1"=1", 3/4" = 1", etc... Most Architect's rules only go to 3"=12" but not smaller (larger?). I had a rule I "customized" for 6"=12" (half-size) for hand-drawn millwork details and profiles years ago for some custom-made windows and sash-weight dbl-hung wood windows with chains. Ironically, there are now a few companies that make them again, back then it was totally custom-fab at a millwrights shop.